{"id":29086,"date":"2019-04-15T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coreblog.prod.adnc.cambridge.org\/?p=29086"},"modified":"2019-04-18T10:59:04","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T09:59:04","slug":"what-is-the-cost-of-police-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2019\/04\/15\/what-is-the-cost-of-police-really\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the cost of police, really?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div>\r\n\r\nA recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/journal-of-benefit-cost-analysis\/article\/estimates-of-law-enforcement-costs-by-crime-type-for-benefitcost-analyses\/0A1A55F70324FDBAA947FF1F18AA1B74\">study<\/a>\u00a0by RAND Corporation researchers examined the average amount of police spending on\u00a0crimes for each state. Averaging the results across all states and considering\u00a0where people live, the cost to respond to various crimes are:\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\r\n \t<li>Homicide:\u00a0$144,00-$177,000<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Rape\/Sexual\u00a0assault: $22,000-$27,000<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Aggravated\u00a0assault: $9,100-$11,600<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Robbery:\u00a0$2,500-$3,200<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Burglary:\u00a0$1,300-$1,700<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Theft:\u00a0$1,100-$1,400<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Motor\u00a0vehicle theft: $850-$1,100<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<strong>What is included in these cost\u00a0estimates?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThese estimates include the time spent by\u00a0various officers and staff to respond to a crime. This may include activities\u00a0like calling officers out to a scene, controlling a crime scene,\u00a0investigations, filling out paperwork, conducting interrogations and arrests,\u00a0and appearing in court.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe\u00a0estimates also include equipment and supply costs, such as fuel for vehicles.\u00a0Also included are things like administrative staff and utilities, and <a href=\"file:\/\/\/C:\\Users\\phunt\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Windows\\INetCache\\Content.Outlook\\U8AIDGJ5\\What%20are%20examples%20of%20these%20benefits%3f\">\u201cfringe benefits\u201d<\/a> (e.g. health insurance). Self-directed retirement\u00a0benefits are excluded (like contributions to a 401(k) or IRA).\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe\u00a0calculations include only the cost to respond to crimes. Police are involved in\u00a0a lot of other activities to prevent crime and to address non-crime-related\u00a0issues. For instance, they help with traffic and traffic accidents. They reach\u00a0out to communities. They conduct patrol. None of those activities are included\u00a0in these costs.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<strong>Why do costs vary across states?\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThe <a href=\"https:\/\/static.cambridge.org\/resource\/id\/urn:cambridge.org:id:binary:20181205075110171-0047:sup-mat:20181205075110171-0047:S2194588818000192sup001.zip\">state-by-state\u00a0results<\/a> vary widely across the states, from a low of $86,070-$127,945 or murder in Michigan, to a high of $230,465-$445,651 for murder in Wyoming.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe results do\u00a0not necessarily reflect on how much it <em>should\u00a0<\/em>cost to fight crime. Just because it costs more in one state does not mean\u00a0police are being wasteful, it could be that they are thorough. Similarly, a\u00a0low-cost state may not be under-policing a crime: maybe they are more efficient\u00a0with their resources.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<strong>How to use these estimates. <\/strong>These estimates are the cost\u00a0to respond to a crime, but they also can be used to quantify the benefit, in\u00a0freed up law enforcement resources, of preventing crime. \u00a0<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nHopefully, these estimates will be used to weigh costs and benefits, and to get a dialogue going on how best to use policing resources.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRead the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/journal-of-benefit-cost-analysis\/article\/estimates-of-law-enforcement-costs-by-crime-type-for-benefitcost-analyses\/0A1A55F70324FDBAA947FF1F18AA1B74\">&#8216;Estimates of Law Enforcement Costs by Crime Type for Benefit-Cost Analyses&#8217;<\/a> here\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<em>Priscillia\u00a0Hunt is an economist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a\u00a0professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.<\/em>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent study by RAND Corporation researchers examined the average amount of police spending on crimes for each state. Averaging the results across all states and considering where people live, the cost to respond to various crimes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":812,"featured_media":29090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,7,122],"tags":[],"coauthors":[5770],"class_list":["post-29086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","category-social-sciences","category-social-studies"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29086"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=29086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}